By Ruth Tucker<\/p>\n
This post relates to Ren\u00e9e<\/strong> of France, but first things first: Michael Servetus burned at the stake. It\u2019s a long story, and Calviin\u2019s defenders have gone to great lengths to prove him innocent. True, Servetus was a pig-headed nuisance who challenged the doctrine of the Trinity. But did he deserve such an awful execution? Calvin had made his position clear. The writings of Servetus were \u201cprodigious blasphemies against God\u201d and \u201cThose who would spare heretics and blasphemers are themselves blasphemers.\u201d<\/p>\n Calvin\u2019s role in the execution of Servetus had lasting repercussions, particularly as Puritans and others who looked to him as a role model took up the practice themselves. What if he had stood strong for the teachings of Jesus and denounced such killings? How different succeeding generations of Christians might have behaved.<\/p>\n But the focus here is on a lesser known aspect of Calvin\u2019s life\u2014his spirited interactions with Ren\u00e9e<\/strong> of Ferera. Born in 1510, she was a year younger than he. Was it love at first sight? Perhaps. But far more than that, he regarded her a royal trophy, as did many others. No wonder. She was the daughter of King Louis XII of France and Anne the Duchess of Brittany, the richest woman in Europe. No brothers to inherit the throne, she was furious that her nephew got the top spot. She, however, had great value as a political pawn in the European game of match-making.<\/p>\n At seventeen she became the wife of Ercole, son of Italy\u2019s infamous Lucrezia Borgia. She would live in luxury at the court in Ferrara, the very center of the Italian Renaissance. The marriage, however, was no love match. All Ercole cared about was an heir to the throne. She came through on that score, bearing five children, including two sons.<\/p>\n While still in France the precocious Ren\u00e9e<\/strong> had secretly converted to Reformed teachings. Later when news of bloody persecution reached her in Italy, she was devastated. In fact, when French \u201cheretics\u201d sought refuge in Ferrara, she surreptitiously welcomed and housed them without her husband\u2019s knowledge. Among them was Charles d\u2019 Espeville, a.k.a. John Calvin, who arrived in the spring of 1536 and stayed for a month.<\/p>\n His influence over her on theological issues was enormous, but she had a strong personality of her own and was not about to become his puppet. From his correspondence, however, it is evident that a close friendship had developed. \u201cIf I address you, madam,\u201d he wrote, \u201cit is not from rashness or presumption, but pure and true affection to make you prevail in the Lord.\u201d He was clearly dazzled by her wealth and her perceived power behind the throne. \u201cWhen I consider the pre-eminence in which He has placed you,\u201d he wrote her, \u201cI think that, as a person of princely rank, you can advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ.\u201d He flattered her for her spiritual maturity: \u201cI observe in you such fear of God, and such a real desire to obey Him, that I should consider myself a castaway if I neglected the opportunity of being useful to you.\u201d<\/p>\n Ren\u00e9e,<\/strong> however, had an Italian husband to contend with and so she continued to publicly behave as though she were a devoted Catholic. Calvin was upset. \u201cI have heard that your domestics have been scandalized,\u201d he wrote, \u201cby the word of a certain preacher who says that one may go both to Mass and to the Lord\u2019s Supper.\u201d Knowing that this included her as well, he warned, \u201cI cannot suffer a wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing. I esteem the word of this preacher no more than the song of a jackdaw. . . . The Mass is an execrable sacrilege and an intolerable blasphemy.\u201d<\/p>\n How dare he! A wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing. Ren\u00e9e<\/strong> was in a very dangerous spot. Didn\u2019t he dress in a peasant\u2019s clothing when he escaped down a rope, hustling away from the terror and persecution of Paris? She was facing terror of her own; the discovery of her Calvinist leanings was no trifling matter.<\/p>\n Initially, when word of her apostasy was reported to Henry II, a staunch Catholic who had succeeded her father as King, he wrote to his beloved \u201conly aunt\u201d to be \u201crestored to the bosom of our holy mother church, cleansed and purified from those cursed dogmas and reprobate errors.\u201d In fact, he would be so kind as to assist her by dispatching to Italy her own personal Inquisitor, Ori, whose assignment would be to offer her spiritual counsel. If she were to resist his compassionate instruction, nephew Henry II threatened that Ori would find it necessary to bring her \u201cto reason by severity.\u201d<\/p>\n If that wasn\u2019t enough to give her a serious case of the jitters, enter Ercole. He was furious with his devious wife who had been contaminating his own household with that damnable Reformed heresy. Wasting no time, he forcibly put her under house arrest and threatened to send their daughters to a convent. \u201cHer maternal instincts firing on all cylinders,\u201d I write in Dynamic Women of the Christian Church, <\/em>\u201cRen\u00e9e<\/strong> sent for a priest to hear her confession and to administer communion. The solution worked. She was set free to care for her young girls.<\/p>\n Calvin didn\u2019t waste a minute to condemn her. \u201cI fear you have left the straight road to please the world.\u201d he wrote her. \u201cAnd indeed the devil has so entirely triumphed that we have been constrained to groan, and bow our heads in sorrow.\u201d What a bully! No understanding. No comfort. Rather, sounding like a petulant old scold, he told her to humble herself before God and come back to the faith, offering no counsel as to what she should do about her daughters.<\/p>\n When Ren\u00e9e<\/strong> was approaching her fiftieth birthday, her husband died and her oldest son, a staunch Catholic, succeeded his father as Duke of Ferrara. She had lived in Ferrara for more than three decades. The time was right. She returned to her beloved homeland to stay. She left behind her ministry to the poor and needy, many of whom wept at her departure. Back home she opened her estate as a refuge for Reformed Christians fleeing persecution.<\/p>\n Here she maintained her correspondence with Calvin, often on testy terms. When her daughter\u2019s Catholic husband was assassinated, she was not ashamed of her sorrow, and she was furious that Calvin had consigned him to hell. She was also troubled that she was not permitted to be part of church decision-making. Calvin had sent his own \u201cinquisitor\u201d to keep Ren\u00e9e<\/strong> in line. \u201cRen\u00e9e<\/strong> wants to attend the meetings of the synod,\u201d he wrote. \u201cBut if Paul thought that women should be silent in the church, how much more should they not participate in the making of decisions. How will the Papists and the Anabaptists scoff to see us run by women!\u201d<\/p>\n Ren\u00e9e<\/strong> wanted her voice heard\u2014particularly on practical matters. She decried the terrible atrocities conducted against Catholics by Reformed vigilantes in France. To \u201cMonsieur Calvin,\u201d she wrote: \u201cI am distressed that you do not know how the half in this realm behave. They even exhort simple women to kill and strangle. This is not the rule of Christ. I say this out of the great affection which I hold for the Reformed religion.\u201d Why didn\u2019t Calvin know how the half behave? Was he looking the other way?<\/p>\n To the very end Ren\u00e9e<\/strong> fought for religious toleration, but it would be a lost cause. In 1572, she would learn of the carnage carried out against Protestants\u2014a slaughter of thousands that would forever be remembered as St. Bartholomew\u2019s Day Massacre. She lived on for two more very sad years and was then laid to rest in France, even as\u2014what many feared\u2014the Reformed faith itself was being laid to rest.<\/p>\n Ren\u00e9e<\/strong> fought for religious freedom, as did Katherine Zell, Anabaptists and others, long before the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. To be charitable, Calvin merely sat on his hands and said nothing. But in reality, he appeared to applaud the awful persecution\u2014a legacy that would follow him for generations.<\/p>\n Shame on you, JC!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Ruth Tucker This post relates to Ren\u00e9e of France, but first things first: Michael Servetus burned at the stake. It\u2019s a long story, and Calviin\u2019s defenders have gone to great lengths to prove him innocent. True, Servetus was a pig-headed nuisance who challenged the doctrine of the Trinity. But did he deserve such an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":87774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n